Hi,

My husband, myself and my 2 teenage daughters will be travelling to Paris in July and then continuing on to Italy (Venice,Florence,Sorrento and Rome) by train. I've been reading the posted messages and still am confused as to what is the most convenient and cheapest way to do it; purchase a rail pass or point to point tickets from each city. Also,we have all our hotels except for Venice. Can anyone recommend one in Piazza San Marco area for a decent price... much appreciated

meecho, montreal, canada

HI M,

Unless you have a huge amount of luggage, I think that it will be cheaper and more convenient for you to fly www.myair.com from Paris ORY to Venice VCE.

You can find the prices of all of your train tickets at www.trenitalia.com.

For train travel in Italy, it is cheaper to buy point to point tickets. You could either buy all tickets at the first station on arrival, or check the trenitalia site for discount tcikets.

I am not sure about "decent price", around San Marco, I have stayed at Hotel Al Leon (budget, www hotelalleon.com), and Hotel Colombina (4 stars, http://colombina.hotelinvenice.com), both are within 5-10 minutes walk to the piazza.

Perhaps you might like to check following discount sites: www.hotels.com, www.venere.com, or expedia.com, www.lastminute.com, from those, sometimes I do find good bargains.

unfortunately we will have 4 large suitcases therefore we need to do it all by train. I've been looking at the trenitalia schedule for point to point prices ...is it possible that they only have one train scheduled from venice to florence at 3:00 or florence to naples at 5:00 a.m.. I can't believe that we'll have to travel by night to get to these cities

Hi M,

>.is it possible that they only have one train scheduled from venice to florence at 3:00 or florence to naples at 5:00 a.m..

Have you been looking at www.trenitalia.com?

I realized that you cannot put a date later than May cause it won't give you a complete schedule, so by putting May I was able to get various schedules for my complete route. Now all we have to figure out is if it's cheaper buying 4 passes or point to point tickets. If we do decide to buy ptp tickets, how do I know which discount fare applies to us...when you click on the arrow, there are so many to choose from. Or should we just buy all of them at the first station being Venice

Hi M,

4 adults pay 4 full fares.

I stayed at Citta Di Milano in March of 04.. it was very close to San Marco, decent breakfast, immaculate bathrooms ( I didn't have a private one, but you can get rooms with a bathroom) I would stay there again..the directions to it are tricky which made it more fun for us. You can check it out on Venere.com.

thank you everyone for your responses, we finally got it down packed. We'll be opting for 4 France-Italy -4day pass; we got a quote of $982 U.S. I have a final question does a pass guarantee a seat on any particular ride or do we still have to book our seats ahead of time. Our quote is from eurorailways ...do they have an 800# accessible for Canada ...I would really like to ask my questions to someone instead of emails. Tks